Joshua Ferdman makes music like he’s bottling ghosts.
In an age of pristine digital production, the New York-based artist is doing the opposite: recording to four-track tape, routing piano mics through Walkman guts, and mixing entire albums on vintage cassette decks.
His latest project, Magnet Dust, is lo-fi not as a genre, but as a philosophy. “It’s about friction,” he says. “The resistance of the machine becomes part of the emotion.”
You can hear that emotion in tracks like “Static Waltz” and “Dustloop,” where hiss and tape warble add layers of depth that pristine recordings can’t replicate.
Critics have described the album as “a blurry photo of a memory you’re not sure is yours.” That ambiguity is intentional. “I want the sound to feel lived-in. Damaged. Familiar in a way you can’t explain.”
Ferdman cites inspirations ranging from Harold Budd to Boards of Canada, but his aesthetic is all his own, a mix of analog nostalgia, modern melancholy, and sonic texture.
What’s next? He’s building a custom modular rig that randomly introduces mechanical imperfections: warped pitch wheels, fluttering reels, uneven gain stages. “I’m designing my flaws,” he laughs.
But beneath the experimentation is intention. “I’m chasing truth, not polish,” Ferdman says. “Lo-fi is how I stay honest.”
With Magnet Dust gaining traction on cassette blogs, YouTube vinyl communities, and even a nod from NPR’s Tiny Desk team, it’s clear that in a world addicted to high-definition clarity, Joshua Ferdman is making noise by staying beautifully blurry.
